4.4. Viva La Vida

Contents: An offer we can refuse; an old friend returns; schedule shenanigans; going Madd; Winning Streak; Eurovision; luck of the Irish and getting a Son in Football Manager (or not 😅)

The year is 2022, and CD Tenerife are second in La Liga after 16 games having just crashed out of the Champions League Group stages and will now contest the Europa League after finishing 3rd in Group G. Victory over Real Sociedad also means that Tenerife advance to the 5th round of the Copa Del Rey, meaning that we will be competing on all fronts during the second half season – a challenge considering we have a squad of 22 players with an average age of just 23 years old.

Having just lost Antonio Marin to Barcelona after they met his €20 million release clause and with Gedion Zelalem also leaving for Swansea in a €2.2 million deal (not bad for a lad we signed on a free 3 years back), there is cash in the bank and it’s time to see if we can find a few bargains in the January Sales/Transfer Window.

Our first move is a welcome one – after failing to bring back Carles Alena for a fourth season on loan from Barcelona in the summer, the Catalan giants agree to loan him out this time around due to lack of game time and he will be a welcome addition to our midfield with the likes of Matt Smith and Lucas Tousart showing signs of fatigue over the busy winter period.

We also bolster our defensive depth by adding Ruben Duarte who comes in on a €3.6m transfer from Alaves – 18 year old Jordi Grasa will still be first choice at Left Back but Duarte will offer healthy competition in that department. We also bring in cover at Right Back in the form of Danish Wonderkid Frederik Norrestrand who signs on loan from Liverpool until the end of the season – this kid is definitely worth scouting: he has 17 Tackling, 17 Acceleration and 16 Pace, what a player he might turn out to be.

On the pitch, January starts off busy – back to victories against Marbella in the Copa Del Rey 5th Round set us up for a Quarter Final clash with Celta Vigo, with both legs scheduled either side of playing them in the league meaning we will play them three times in a row, All of a sudden January looks crazy with 9 fixtures scheduled in the month – it’s a very good month for Los Chicharreros though, as we pick up 9 wins out of 9 including 3 wins over Vigo and a cracking away win against league leaders Athletic Bilbao in the Copa Del Rey Semi Final First Leg – it’s also a belter of a month for our main hitman Brenner, who racks up 10 goals in the month propelling him to the top of the league scoring charts – Happy New Year!!

Despite this incredible spell of good form, we still find ourselves 3 points behind Barcelona who are also winning all around them – by the end of January we are still in 2nd place, 7 points ahead of Real Madrid and looking in a strong position at this stage of the season.

More Ireland to the Island ☘️☘️

With a few Euros in the account and some transfer budget remaining, we decide that despite Brenner’s unbelievable goalscoring form, we will bolster our ranks with a backup Striker who can potentially also be retrained as an Inside Forward to cover the gap left by Antonio Marin’s transfer to Barcelona. One player which we mentioned in a previous post was Irish International Striker Adam Idah, who starts the game as a Norwich player and moved to Leeds in 2020 in this save – a few words with our esteemed Chairman Senior Miguel Concepcion convinces him to part with €7 million for Idah’s signature and the half Irish/half Nigerian forward joins us just in time before the transfer window closes – another Irishman is welcomed on the island of Tenerife 🍺

In the game the lad looks dangerous with 17 Pace, 14 Finishing, 13 Off the Ball and 16 Acceleration – in real life he is already an Irish U-21 international who has been linked with a move to Manchester United, and it will be interesting to see if he features for Norwich in the Premier League next season after they gained promotion by winning the Championship this year.

Courtesy of TrezegolScout

February brings four noteworthy events – one is a record number of games won in a row where we pick up 12 games on the trot, which keeps us in second place as we keep the pressure on league leaders Barcelona;

Our 2nd gift in February is that Copa Del Rey Semi Final 2nd leg against Bilbao – after going 2-1 ahead in the first leg, we welcome Bilbao to Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez for the return leg and it’s ends in an extremely comfortable 3-0 victory – setting us up nicely for our first ever Copa Del Rey Final against Barcelona on Saturday 21st May 2022.

3rd item on the agenda for February is our Europa League debut with two victories against Dynamo Kiev – Mount and Brenner bagging a couple of goals as well as a debut goal for that man Adam Idah.

Finally, the month that keeps on giving comes to an end as we unfortunately reach the end of our winning streak as we lose two in a row against Valencia and Real Madrid respectively, making it advantage Barcelona in La Liga.

“YOU’VE GOT MAIL”

A while back we received an offer to interview for the Liverpool job – this time Roman Abramovic is the one making advances as we are invited to interview for the Chelsea role. Seeing as I am in the middle of trying to negotiate a new contract with Senior Concepcion this can only help our case – unexpectedly however, we are actually offered the job and suddenly I am tempted considering the offer as I look at them in 5th place in the Premier League with a squad that includes Andrea Belotti, Gelson Martins, Benjamin Pavard, Samuel Umtiti and Ruben Neves.

In the end we turn down the offer – we still have work here to do in Tenerife, plus we have yet to fulfill our main objective which is to dethrone Barcelona and Real Madrid from the pinnacle of Spanish football.

Getting a Son in Football Manager

March arrives and with it comes our annual Youth Intake. Our last few haven’t been great, therefore my hopes are not overly high however as I browse through the latest batch of Newgens I’m stumped to see the following:

HOLY SHIT – HAVE WE GOT A SON IN FOOTBALL MANAGER IN JUST OUR 5TH EVER INTAKE?!!!

I fear it may be too good to be true – if your Irish geography isn’t up to scratch – Mullingar is a small town in the middle of Ireland that is most famous for being the homeplace of One Direction’s Niall Horan. Unfortunately – it is not the home of Tenerife Manager MaddFM, and straight away I get the feeling that something might be up here as my own birth place is set to Galway.

Sadly I am right – while 15-year-old Tony Madden is in fact from Ireland and we share the same surname and nationality, it is clear that he is not in fact my FM son based on both his birthplace and also his list of favourite personnel which regretfully doesn’t have me listed as his father – devastating!

Being honest – getting a son in Football Manager is something which until this year I hadn’t really thought about or read into, thinking that this would only occur if you have managed for 10 or 20 years consecutively at the same club or something – however it popped up on my radar in recent months and I have read a few articles and insights in to how it works – read on if you aren’t too familiar with it!

Seemingly the only criteria for getting a son in Football Manager is that your Manager must be over the age of 35 in the game – some forums online have mentioned that you must stay at the same club for 10+ years in order to have a chance however apparently this is not the case, and there is something like a 1 in 10,000 chance of it happening in-game. It can happen with every fresh youth intake which usually takes pace in February or March each year, so the next time you have an intake come up be sure to look out for your future offspring!! I spotted @KeysieRensie managed to have two sons within one save (must have powerful FM swimmers), and a few FM’ers have even taken to reloading the game repeatedly until it happens (for example @WorktheSpace did it on Stream once a while back here) – however for the purposes of blogging, gameplay and my own sanity we will not be doing the same here and instead we will take Tony under our wing for the time being and see if we can develop him.

Read more about getting a son in Football Manager below:

FootballManagerBlog (@official_FMB): “How to Get a Son in Football Manager”
Sports Interactive Forum: “Getting a Son in Regen Intake”
Sports Interactive Forum: “The Mystery of Having a Son”

March/April

March and April are all about two things – 1. the Europa League and 2. Brenner. We narrowly advance to the Europa League Quarter Final winning 6-5 on penalties after a 1-1 aggregate draw with Schalke 04 over the two legs, which sets us up for a tricky Quarter Final clash with AS Roma who boast the likes of Kostas Manolas, Bryan Cristante, Cengiz Ünder and Justin Kluivert in their ranks – surprisingly they prove to be far easier to overturn than Schalke as we dominate both legs and go through 5-0 on aggregate, putting us through to our first ever European Semi-Final; more on that later. In between all of this, we also pick up 8 straight victories in La Liga, the highlight being a 2-0 win over League leaders Barcelona which is one of the few games that Brenner doesn’t score in, the Brazilian Striker has now taken his season tally above 30 in all competitions scoring 13 goals in as many games in the last two months.

As we come enter May and the final stages of the season, the Title Race is well and truly on – with 7 games to go we sit in 2nd place, 5 points behind Barcelona but with 3 games in hand. For the first time so far in this save, winning the league seems a realistic possibility.

I don’t know if it was all this father and son nonsense or whether Tenerife’s forward march in all competitions has Manager MaddFM on edge, but we can clearly see a Jurgen Klopp-esque passion emerging on the sidelines for Los Chicharreros:

Europa League Semi-Final Draw

We are live for the Semi-Final Draw of the 2022 Europa League where four teams remain in the battle for silverware in this historic competition. 3 time winners Liverpool will be hot favourites after winning the Premier League last season, and will be disappointed not to be competing for Champions League glory after an unexpected exit after the group stages; the same could be said for Tenerife who also left the Champions League prematurely, as they compete to reach their first every European Final. Borussia Monchengladbach are no strangers to this stage of the competition having reached the final four times in their history, winning on two occasions, while the last Semi-Final spot is filled by Italian Giants AC Milan who have never actually won this competition previously and will be eager to add the trophy to their collection. Let’s go live to Switzerland where the draw is just about to take place:

Liverpool it is!!! My next post will bring us through two difficult Semi-Final games against the Merseysiders as well as finish our epic league run-in where we still have shot at dethroning Barcelona and potentially winning La Liga for the first time in our history! Not to mention we have a Copa Del Rey Final to play where we look to stop Barcelona from winning a treble and keep our own dreams of winning one alive – thanks for reading, I hope you are enjoying this rollercoaster of a save and feel free to read back from the start to catch up on how we have come from being Secunda Division outsiders to La Liga contenders in just under 5 seasons. Forza Los Chicharreros!! Please also hit the Follow button below and check out my Twitter page for further updates and FM content – until next time! Cheers, MaddFM.